The Power of a Father

The recent experience of walking my beautiful daughter down the aisle on her wedding day is something I have few adequate words to describe. The whole day was a epiphany from beginning to end.
After my father of the bride speech it appears that I had caused not a small number of, mostly, but not entirely, women to cry.
Without going into my merits or otherwise as a father, I have been struck afresh by the very real power of a father, and how witnessing (or being part of) that relationship at its best can awaken the deepest emotions in all of us.
Post wedding research revealed that my words as a proud father that day made people cry through emotions stirred on a wide spectrum. Some were identifying with a positive experience in knowing thier own father, and my proud words of affirmation were resonating with memories of words their own fathers may have spoken over them. Others were apparently dissolved by the pain of shame and anger at the memory of harsh or absent fathers, and being awakened afresh to a large gap or rent in their unhealed hearts. Indeed one person had to leave the room due to the depth of emotion this raised.
We are all children who long for a father to love us, to affirm us, be proud of us and lay out loving boundries for us. When we see even a glimpse of such a father it touches the heart of who we are and reveals the true Father. He is a 'glorious Father...from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name'. (Eph 3:15 NIV)
In other words, he is the only one who can tell us who we really are. And he is very good at it, even when we dont have a good earthly image to extrapolate from, because even if you've had a bad father, or in the case of a friend of mine - no father at all, we still know intuitively what a good father should be like.
He is all and more, and if my few words can elicit such a response from people across a range of experiences, imagine what one word from a perfect Father can do.